Starring: Alan Ritchson, Robert Patrick, Maria Sten, Shaun Sipos, Serinda Swan, Domenick Lombardozzi, Andres Collentes, Ferdinand Kingsley
Season two of Reacher merely confirmed my reservations about the show in season one. Reacher himself is a hulking machine who is too cool to be human. He rarely shows fear, emotion, or doubt. He may as well be a Terminator and be played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Alan Ritchson has the look for the role, but lacks charisma. This didn't change in season two, where Reacher is able to think himself out of any situation no matter how perilous. And he can thrash ten guys at a time, since they make it easy for him by attacking him one at a time like in old karate movies.
In one scene, a group of gun-toting villains has our weaponless group of heroes surrounded. All they had to do was start shooting and Reacher and his friends would be toast. Instead, they throw the guns away and start fisticuffs. Why? Reacher says something about the baddies not wanting to make noise, but if your mission is to snuff out your enemy, noise ordinances are the last thing on your mind. So often, the villains have Reacher or someone dead to rights and instead they monologue and talk until Reacher can figure his way out of the dilemma. Roger Ebert used to call this "The Fallacy of the Talking Killer". It appears the show's writers didn't read Ebert.
Reacher and his old unit of military investigators look into the death of one of their own, who was thrown from a helicopter after being tortured. This leads to a mystery which takes these folks roughly a few days to unfurl. All points lead to a weapons manufacturer selling 650 units to dealer only known as "A.M." (Kingsley) who will in turn sell to terrorists. A.M. is built up to be a supervillain who creatively kills innocent victims who could recognize him. We figure he will eventually fight Reacher one-on-one and give him a run for the money. Nope. Once A.M. is lured into a trap by Reacher's team, he is left impotently standing with guns pointing at him pleading for his life. Then, they all shoot him and that's that. It's a disappointing payoff to a promising buildup of the character.
The plot itself sways from occasional moments which made me care to pure apathy. Reacher morphs into just another cliched action show where people are shot in the head three times (a la John Wick) because they feel once might not be enough. Robert Patrick is on hand as Shane Langston, the former cop turned criminal leading the weapons deal who is devious and hateful enough to be a bad guy whose demise we would like to see, but we also know is no match for Reacher. Then again, who is?
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